Japan's chip vendors slide down Q1 global rankings

LONDON – Several Japanese semiconductor companies, former leading lights of the industry, have fallen in a first quarter 2013 ranking of semiconductor vendors from market research firm IC Insights, when compared with the same quarter a year before.

Toshiba slipped one place to fifth, but Renesas Electronics crashed out of the top ten as sales dropped 20 percent; Sony dropped three places to 16th with a 31 percent fall in quarterly sales; and Fujitsu fell from 15 th position in 1Q12 to 20 the position in 1Q13 as its sales fell 26 percent (see table below).

IC Insights pointed out that the conversion of Japanese company semiconductor sales from yen to U.S. dollars, at 79.26 yen per dollar in 1Q12 versus 92.19 yen per dollar in 1Q13, had a big impact on the sales figures. Thus, while Sony and Fujitsu would have logged a double-digit semiconductor sales decline even if their sales results were not converted to U.S. dollars, Toshiba would have posted a 5 percent increase in semiconductor sales if the figures were expressed in yen.

The top 20 worldwide semiconductor companies – including ICs, discrete, optoelectronic and sensor chips – for 1Q13 include nine suppliers headquartered in the U.S., four in Japan, three in Europe, and two each in South Korea and Taiwan, a relatively broad representation of geographic regions. IC Insight's top 20 ranking also includes three pure-play foundries and four fabless companies.

The inclusion of foundries in such rankings is contentious because it means that some sales are double counted – from foundry to fabless chip company and then from fabless chip company to customer. IC Insights excuses itself by saying that the ranking is a top supplier list, not a marketshare ranking.

In total, the top 20 semiconductor companies' sales increased by 2 percent in 1Q13 as compared to 1Q12.

Intel remained firmly in control of the top spot in the 1Q13 ranking despite seeing its sales decline. Memory chip companies Samsung and SK Hynix achieved sales growth of 13 and 20 percent, respectively. Foundry TSMC and its fabless customer Qualcomm scored year-on-year growth of 26 and 28 percent, respectively.

Other notable performances in terms of growth – indicated in figure 2 – include the growth of sales by NXP and foundry United Microelectronics Corp. by 12 percent.

The now fabless Advanced Micro Devices is still in trouble, according to IC Insights. Rather than benefiting from the fabless trend AMD' was the worst performing of the top 20 chip vendors, seeing its 1Q13 sales decline by 31 percent.

Bill : Thx fo your prompt reply. But don't you think that a fair comparison between an IDM and a Fabless requires that kind of "value added" based accounting. How difficult would it be ? Isn't their Foundry expense info available from quarterly reports ?

Regarding using the "value added" by a fabless company as its sales figure, if you assume a gross margin of 50% (usually most fabless companies have a higher gross margin but not all of the cost of sales would be for the foundry) for example, you could simply
cut a fabless companies sales in half and come close to their "value added." By doing so, the rankings would change dramatically of course. Essentially, the only real limit to "adjusting" the rankings to ones individual outlook is how much time you want to spend doing it.

When we send out our original news bulletin regarding our rankings we always include the following statement:
"IC foundries are included in the top-XX semiconductor supplier ranking because IC Insights has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not as a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases semiconductor sales are double counted. With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers. Foundries and fabless companies are each clearly identified in the ranking. Overall, the ranking is provided as a guideline to identify which companies are the leading semiconductor suppliers, whether they are IDMs, fabless companies, or foundries.
It should be noted that not all foundry sales should be excluded when attempting to create marketshare data. For example, although Samsung has a large amount of foundry sales, most of its sales are to Apple. Since Apple does not re-sell these devices, counting these foundry sales as Samsung semiconductor sales does not introduce double counting."
When the news bulletin regarding rankings is published elsewhere, such as EET's web site, this information is usually truncated or not printed at all. It should be noted that anyone can receive IC Insights' actual weekly research bulletins by e-mail free of charge by going to IC Insights' website and signing up (www.icinsights.com).

I not mad actually but has uncomfortable feeling when statement like this always been post.
I'm not putting down S. Korea semi industry, and their 2 very best companies rank very high and doing well globally.
But you are not close enough to get my true point espacially about S. Korea semi industy overall. As most people and even you will directly come to note Samsung and SK Hynix when we been ask to name S. Korea semi companies. Other than that we will blur, maybe a semi expert can name some. Here is S. Korea industry lack,(more companies:SME or large) not to say there are non exist, they are quit many can be found here but from lack of support and heavy competition from large companies they suffered, although a number found success but still lack global opportunity to compete and sometimes acquired by large player.
Look at Taiwan they has succeed to create a cluster of semi companies more so than S. Korea even challenge US semi co. dominant. Than in future China will step in the game.
You has mention about Samsung revenue to Intel and also even about talent pool/cash reserve, but that's not my point. Even if Samsung acquired number of companies its still Samsung same can be applied to Intel here, where is the diversity, dynamic, competition, that this industry must have where companies can innovate. Thanks.

Here is a point for both IC insight ( who created the original table ) and EE Times who repeated it.
When you include fabless co.s e,g qualcomm, nvidia, broadcom and then their foundry tsmc all in the same list does that not imply that some sort of double counting going on ??
How about going a little further and ranking them in terms of the value added ( i,e. do NOT include what they paid tsmc to have their chips made ). That would probably take 40 % off the earnings of the fabless co.s

Note: aktion99's posting was removed from this thread for use of vulgarity. I would agree that the post contained several good point, but we can't tolerate use of obscenities, sorry. EE Times is a family site.

aktion99.. Pls calm down when you post. you have many good points but only a decade ago Samsung was fraction of Intel (now 70% revenue). Remember Samsung/LG have huge cash reserve and with huge talent pool in various consumer industries.
if they want to, they can just buy number of valuable companies you listed. They just choose not to.... yet.